I’m abandoning Tumblr. Here’s why:
Hi to all the people that somehow, through nearly 3 years of being inactive, still follow me on this page.
I’ve decided to officially abandon Tumblr. As some of you might know, when I started this blog I was down in the dumps - to say the least. I am now grown up (I guess?) and have had plenty of therapy and I find myself disliking the tumblr-way-of-life - if you will. I’ll explain:
I started this blog in 2009 (I think) when I was 13. I was heavily depressed, down in the dumps. I self-harmed, wanted to kill myself, had social anxiety and a personality disorder. To this day I still struggle with teeeeeny tiny relapses & majorly with social anxiety and said personality disorder.
Back then, Tumblr was my outlet. The depression blogs on here made me feel understood and like a normal person. That could’ve been the end of it and yes - for those two reasons only, the depression blogs are good and are here to help people find an outlet for their mental health issues. Unfortunately, those exact blogs have a pretty nasty side to them, and that is what I wanted to talk to you all about.
I found these blogs to be extremely triggering. It would only take a few clicks and I would be able to look at pictures, gifs, and videos of people selfharming. It would only take a few clicks and I would be able to see people talking about suicide, about potential methods and sometimes I even found people encouraging each other to do so. The depressed gifs and pictures and posts sometimes would make me feel even worse. They’d go from feeling like being pulled into a warm, understanding hug, to a knife stabbing me in the chest. They’d make me feel even worse.
The issue I have with these types of blogs / gifs / pictures / videos / and sometimes even text posts is that they’re so easily accessible and I personally never saw Tumblr actively deleting such content or warning people about posting such content.
I am in no way saying that these blogs shouldn’t exist. Because, yes, they bring comfort and warmth in the darkest and coldest of days. They make you feel less lonely after a shit day and they can make you feel understood. Unfortunately, they can also very easily trigger people to relapse into or start self harming / thinking about suicide / depression etc. The fact that this content is so easily accessible and rebloggable and spreadable is what I believe to be a serious issue to the mental health of a lot of younger (and possibly older) Tumblr users.
I hope Tumblr will understand one day that just putting up a hashtag “trigger warning” will not stop these posts from damaging / triggering people.
Because, let’s all be honest, how many times have you known that something could trigger you, but looked at it anyway? I know I did. I know that that means I’m probably not the only one that did.
So. That’s it. That’s why I’m abandoning Tumblr. I’ve been looking into changing my blog to a password protected blog to keep my coworkers from finding it or to keep anyone else from finding it, but it seems you can’t do that to your primary blog.
Thank you all for following me over the years and I hope you all stay safe & healthy.
(Please note that all of this is from my own experience. I’m talking about my look on things. This does not necessarily mean that everybody should or will agree with me.)
